Samsung's AIRAVE femtocell for Sprint

Back in April of 2007 at the CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, Samsung unveiled what it at that time called the UbiCell, a small white femtocell for CDMA networks on the 850 and 1900MHz frequency bands, such as those used by Verizon, Alltel, and Sprint. It promised strong, localized coverage for users that otherwise had trouble connecting to their carrier's network. Fast forward more than a year, and the UbiCell is finally available for purchase as the Samsung AIRAVE for Sprint.

Features and Cost

In short, what the AIRAVE does is it acts as a small cell tower in your home or office, through which Sprint phones can make voice calls or establish data connections. This isn't the same as a signal booster, instead the AIRAVE connects directly to Sprint's network through the customer's broadband internet connection. The net result is that AIRAVE users get a strong, fast signal, and Sprint gets to conserve some of the capacity in its existing towers.

This sounds like a win for everybody, right? Well it is, but the twist is that Sprint charges $99.99 for the AIRAVE itself as well as for the service it provides. For $4.99 per month a home or office can use the AIRAVE to boost signals inside the building. The AIRAVE supports up to 3 simultaneous active connections at a time - be they voice or data. So if your building has poor Sprint coverage, you can pay Sprint to fix the problem. That might prove perhaps a bit difficult to swallow for some people, especially when one considers that T-Mobile's @Home service, which uses WiFi based UMA and specific handset models, provides that improved coverage for free. Any UMA capable T-Mobile phone can connect via WiFi to T-Mobile's network to get improved coverage.

But just as T-Mobile offers a fee-based @Home service plan option that provides unlimited calling when connected to WiFi, Sprint offers an unlimited AIRAVE based calling option as well. For $10 per month on top of the $4.99 base monthly fee, a user can get unlimited calling when attached to his or her AIRAVE station. For multi-line accounts, such as family plans, the option for unlimited calling (still limited to the 3 simultaneous calls at a time) costs $20 per month. For those that work out of a home office, or for families with a stay at home parent, this could still be very appealing.

Setup and Use

When placed on the ground floor of our house, the AIRAVE provided a Samsung Instinct on the 3rd floor a 3 bar signal where the phone typically only managed 1 at best. On the first and second floors of the house the Instinct reports a near-constant full strength signal. Calls connected quickly and voice quality was great when using the AIRAVE. Simply put, it works as advertised.

Setup for the device is pretty simple. Just connect the included ethernet cable to the AIRAVE and to your internet router, attach the AIRAVE's power cable, and flip the power switch. That's it. It takes a while for the AIRAVE to connect to the network and find a proper GPS signal (required for 911 services), especially on the first time out of the box, but there is nothing else that the user need do.

By default the AIRAVE will allow any Sprint phone to connect through it, meaning visiting clients or friends will gain the benefit of its coverage. But if you live in an apartment or otherwise keep bumping up against the 3 simultaneous calls limitation due to free-loaders, the AIRAVE can be reconfigured to only accept connections from up to 50 authorized numbers. This feature can be enabled by contacting Sprint.